Home / General / NFL Open Thread: Signing Running Backs to Expensive Contracts is Like Investing in Enron in 1999

NFL Open Thread: Signing Running Backs to Expensive Contracts is Like Investing in Enron in 1999

/
/
/
2034 Views

The NFL has largely caught up to what empirical evidence has overwhelmingly shown about the relative importance of running and passing for decades:

The “establish the run” mentality is finally dead. 

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie debunked the NFL‘s most long-established, outdated and illogical myth during a wide-ranging interview with Sheil Kapadia of The Athletic. When asked for his opinion on the “establish the run” wisdom that often comes up in broadcasts, Lurie straight-up rolled his eyes, per Kapadia:

“‘What’s the right way to say this?’ [Lurie] asks himself out loud. “It’s just not a truthful way of reporting based on all the information we now have. OK? That’s sort of a nice way to say it.'”

Lurie finally said what analytics experts and statisticians have been screaming for decades.

Bob Carroll, John Thorn and Pete Palmer decried “establish the run” logic and its corollaries (The Lions need to give Barry Sanders 25 carries, because they are 15-1 when he gets 25 carries) in their groundbreaking book The Hidden Game of Football way back in 1988. My longtime friend Aaron Schatz founded Football Outsiders and began the modern football analytics movement 15 years ago by debunking run-to-win myths.

More recently, Ben Baldwin ofThe Athletic studied the topic extensively in a series of articles for Football Outsiders. He found no quantifiable relationship between running and play-action passing; nor between running the ball and controlling time of possession; nor between the amount of rest a defense gets (because the run was “established,” keeping it off the field) and defensive performance. 

Every scrap of evidence shows that NFL teams run too often and overemphasize the value of the running game. But NFL coaches still cling to “establish the run” rhetoric, even as the leaguewide run-pass rate keeps climbing toward 60 percent passing (it was 58.8 percent last year, with sacks counted as pass attempts but quarterback scrambles still considered runs).

The shorthand sometimes used for this — “running backs don’t matter” — is of course not literally true. What is true is that 1)the marginal quality of a team’s passing game is far more important than the marginal quality of its running game 2)top running backs have much shorter peaks and are much less consistent within those peaks than players at other positions and 3)teams can generally replace star running backs with randos and come out just fine.

And despite the market correction RBs are still almost certainly overvalued. Bill Barnwell has a look at the recent big contracts given to veteran running backs, and the results are brutal. As Mike Tanier puts it, if Ezekiel Elliott plays well over the life of his contract, he’ll be getting “Rolls Royce money for Lexus production at a lawnmower position.” And if that happens it would be the exception to the rule. Le’Veon Bell getting paid tons of money to put up 3.2 Y/A is a much more common scenario.

Also a bad idea is investing premium draft picks in running backs. For every Christian McCaffrey there are a lot more of these:

By virtue of being drafted with the fourth overall pick, Fournette ended up with one of the largest running back contracts in football when he was signed. The Jaguars drafted him after throwing asset after asset at running back and hoped to solve their problem for good. In the process, they passed on Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. That alone makes the Fournette pick a disastrous example of opportunity cost. As you’ll see, he might be the 10th-best runner in his own draft class.

The Bears have gotten absolutely roasted for trading up to pick Mitch Trubisky with Mahomes and Watson still on the board, and this is eminently justified — when you take a risk as extraordinary as drafting a one-year starter (previous best outcome: the Sanchize!) with the #2 overall pick with much more accomplished prospects still on the board, you’d better goddamned well be right, and whomp whomp. But the Jags picking what turned out to be an ordinary-to-be-kind running back over Mahomes and Watson doesn’t look a lot better. Meanwhile, Saquon Barkley — who got a lot of positive reviews for a good-not-great rookie season — currently ranks 33rd in Yards Above Replacement, just below another first round pick in Sony Michel, who’s having a dreadful year in a great offensive infrastructure. It’s a bad investment, a huge risk with a low ceiling of reward even if one’s judgement proves correct.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :